OOKE, NICHOLAS FRANCIS, Professor, M. D., of Chicago, Ills., was born in Providence, R. I., on the 25th
of August, 1829. He is descended from an old and distinguished Rhode Island family. He is a great-grandson of Hon. Nicholas Cooke, the first Continental
Governor of the State of Rhode Island. He was long under the private tuition of the venerable Thomas Shephard, D. D., of Bristol, R. I., and was
prepared for college by Messrs. Merrick Lyon and Henry S. Frieze -the latter the Professor of the Latin Language and Literature in the University of
Michigan, and the author of several valuable classical works.

He studied medicine with Usher Parsons, M. D., of Providence, R. I. He entered Brown University as a
Freshman in 1846, and was contemporaneously a student in that institution, though not a classmate, with Dr. J. B. Angell, the present incumbent of the
presidential chair of the University of Michigan. He spent the time from 1849 to 1852 in visiting various foreign countries, acted as the ship's surgeon
on board of different vessels during his voyages, and finally made a complete circuit of the globe. In 1852, he entered the Medical Department of the
University of Pennsylvania ; he also attended the lectures at the Jefferson Medical College, and finally graduated, in the spring of 1854, at the
Homopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania. His conversion to homopathy was the result of an investigation upon which he entered with the view of
taking intelligent ground against it.

He entered upon the practice of his profession in his native city, in company with A. H. Okie, M. D.,
the first homopathic graduate in America. He removed to Chicago in 1855, where he has since been identified with every great movement in the progress
of homopathy in that city, and possesses a practice that is both extensive and laborious.

He was married, on the 15th of October, 1856, to Laura Wheaton Abbot, of Warren, R. I., a daughter of
the late Commodore Joel Abbot, of the United States Navy, by whom he has four children.

At the organization of the Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago, in 1859, he was chosen Professor of
Chemistry, and subsequently of Theory and Practice, which chair he filled with great ability and distinction until his resignation, in 1870.

Previous to the great fire of October 9th, 1871, his residence was in the northern division of the
city, whence, in common with so many thousands, he was driven from house and home by the terrible rapacity of that devouring element. The narration of
his numerous narrow and marvelous escapes, while fleeing with his family and others who had sought his protection, is full of adventure and interest. In
less than one week from the date of the sad catastrophe he was comfortably re-established and doing as large a business as before. He twice received the
compliment of an election to the chair of Theory and Practice, in different medical institutions, accompanied by flattering proposals to remove his
residence, but he has felt constrained to reject them. With the opening of the Pulte Homopathic College of Cincinnati, O., in the fall of 1872, he
appeared as its Professor of Special Pathology and Diagnosis, which chair he still holds though he retains his extensive practice in Chicago.

At a convention of homopathic physicians, held at Ann Arbor, Mich., on the 7th of May, 1873, for the
purpose of naming three candidates for each of the chairs of Theory and Practice and Materia Medica, in the Medical Department of the University of
Michigan, which, by the action of the Legislature of 1872-'73, were awarded to the homopathic profession, he was the first of the three nominated for
the chair of Theory and Practice, from which the Regents of the University will make their selection. He is a prominent writer, and has contributed
extensively both to general and medical literature. He is the author of a work called "Satan in Society, by a Physician," published in 1871,
which has met with an enormous sale and created a marked sensation. As a lecturer he is both accomplished and attractive, while his social relations are
of the highest order and qualify him in every respect for any position to which it may be his good fortune to be advanced.

He and his accomplished wife have been for several years attached to the Roman Catholic Church.